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There's been a lot of talk of late about signal-to-noise ratios here on MeFi (er, Ashcroft who?...). Generally, we think of noise as something that always degrades the quality of a signal. Sometimes, however, the opposite can be the case. Here's a neat little demonstration of a non-linear system in which noise can be used to amplify a signal that would otherwise be too be faint to detect any other way. It exploits a phenomenon known as Stochastic Resonance.
comment posted at 8:21 PM on Jan-28-01
comment posted at 12:23 PM on Jan-29-01

Quoth the Ravens, nevermore. 34 - 7, and the Vince Lombardi trophy goes back to Baltimore. My favorite spots were...
comment posted at 7:16 PM on Jan-28-01
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comment posted at 7:29 AM on Jan-29-01
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comment posted at 7:38 AM on Jan-30-01

When is a photograph not a photograph?
...and does it matter? Photosnobs get bent out of shape at Photo.net.
comment posted at 4:27 PM on Jan-28-01

the birthday girl got her best birthday ever, she told the newspaper. "I got a stripper and I got to bitch out Naomi Judd," she said.
comment posted at 9:51 PM on Jan-27-01
comment posted at 9:52 PM on Jan-27-01

DirecTV takes a stand and VIA satellite, "killed pirated pieces of hardware that had enabled viewers in the U.S. and abroad to see a broad range of programming, including premium channels and pay-per-view events that they had not paid for." I didn't even know these pieces of hardware existed, but there are whole sites dedicated to satellite hacking which tell you what to do now if you had one of these. I hope if you have one of these cards you didn't have a Super Bowl Party planned.
comment posted at 8:47 AM on Jan-30-01

yahoogroups conversion of egroups is in full swing. I've been through the conversion from onelist to egroups, but now with this they're mandating a conversion to the Yahoo ID and killing off the old sign-in system - which was email address + password. Why *must* I have a Yahoo ID?
comment posted at 11:59 AM on Jan-26-01
comment posted at 10:00 PM on Jan-27-01

We Live in Public launches! Voyeur alert. Note: Free registration required...
comment posted at 12:32 PM on Jan-26-01

Strangest Story Ever Told - The Weird Legend of Jesus in Japan
Little known religious fact #2: Jesus didn't die up on his cross at Golgotha. That was actually his brother. Christ himself fled across Siberia and, after a brief detour through Alaska, landed in Japan, where he got married and raised a family.
Warning: some wacky religious notions will be mentioned in this article.
comment posted at 8:19 AM on Jan-25-01

Britney Spears cusses, and you can hear it. (Napster link)
comment posted at 6:49 PM on Jan-25-01

Google Editorializing? Someone forwarded me this search on google. Look at the first link. Is this pure editorializing or just dumb (pardon the pun) luck?
comment posted at 1:47 PM on Jan-24-01

Ford Motor goes after 13 year old girl for her domain name. Personally, I'm disgusted with corporate America right now.
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comment posted at 8:47 AM on Jan-25-01

This is, of course, intended as humor, albeit rather coarse humor, but it's all too depressingly accurate. Why does customer service suck so badly these days? [Spotted at Joel on Software, whom I haven't disagreed with much lately... probably because he hasn't said much lately. :-)]
comment posted at 1:43 PM on Jan-24-01
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comment posted at 8:56 AM on Jan-25-01
comment posted at 2:55 PM on Feb-9-01

Microsoft properties down again. This time due to DNS routing. How embarrassing for them.
comment posted at 10:11 AM on Jan-24-01
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comment posted at 1:21 PM on Jan-24-01
comment posted at 5:36 PM on Jan-24-01

"IT," also known as "Ginger," has not yet been released by its inventor, but we'll be glad to notify you by e-mail when we actually know what IT is and if IT will be available for purchase from Amazon.com.
comment posted at 1:58 PM on Jan-24-01

Superbowl Sunday meets The Matrix Some of you may not need a reason to watch the phenomenon that is Superbowl Sunday. Others of us need technological cajoling. Here's a video demonstrating the replay special effect. (Sorry about the Verizon ad.) via slashdot.
comment posted at 8:18 AM on Jan-24-01

dumb. (but then again, posting a large image file isn't really clever either.)
comment posted at 12:17 PM on Jan-23-01

Tri-State Malted Waffles Why? Because I spent a half hour in heavy, waffling traffic, slowly passing and being passed by one of their trucks bearing the plate 'WAFFL1'. Hee. It's fun to say over and over again: malted waffles malted waffles malted waffles. Uh-oh - might be time to take that test again.
comment posted at 5:49 PM on Jan-24-01

Bill Gates and 17 paupers appointed to National Infrastructure Assurance Council. [ couldn't beat their lead. Also from Cryptome. I'm done now. :-) ]
comment posted at 7:40 AM on Jan-23-01

Well, here's a good Point/CounterPoint: The More Guns Bill / The Less Guns Bill. [ Courtesy of Cryptome, whence the Gilmore screed ]
comment posted at 7:41 AM on Jan-23-01

Erik Davis on Feed: "I feel compelled to mention the strangely underreported fact that, thanks to the FCC, all U.S. cell phones will soon be required to pack GPS units (or some equivalent tech) that will allow their location to be fixed the moment that 911 is dialed... the FCC has also ruled that wireless carriers, and not users, own GPS location data, and can freely sell it to third parties... your radio-cum-PDA-cum-cell phone... may want to tell you about the great deal on Beanie Babies or Canon’s 15 x 45 image-stabilized binoculars that awaits you two shops down to the right."
comment posted at 5:01 PM on Jan-22-01
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comment posted at 7:47 AM on Jan-23-01

John Gilmore (via Wes Felter) lets the dogs out on the new Mac DVD-R drive. Seems it's a DVD-General drive, rather than a DVD-Authoring drive, and, therefore, there are lots of things you might want to do with it that you can't.

This is how Apple can fit a $4500 drive into a $3500 machine.
comment posted at 12:08 PM on Jan-23-01

Linux no longer foolproof? And a smile descened upon Redmond...
comment posted at 11:31 AM on Jan-22-01

Co$ Tackiness The Church of Scientology spinoff Narconon completely rips off the Urban75 Web site (including similar meta tag content). Jeeze....talk about unabashed design stealing.
comment posted at 11:44 AM on Jan-22-01

"One giant leap backward for sports womankind." Playboy runs an article about female sports-casters. (ESPN and ABC told them to "get stuffed" when asked for photos and bios. Bravo!) And there was a reader poll. The winner of the poll was supposed to get an offer of a million bucks to do a nude pictorial in the mag. (She declined. An even bigger Bravo!) More interesting is that third place in the poll went to woman who described herself as having "reached the 175-pound mark during her third pregnancy, at age 38". (I wonder if it was a protest vote, like when "Hank the angry drunken dwarf won People Magazine's online "Most beautiful people" poll. [I voted for him.]) Of course, the kicker is that Playboy is run by Christie Hefner, Hugh's daughter. He retired from the business a long time ago. So, today's quiz: Is Christie Hefner a symbol of the success of American Womanhood, or a traitor to the cause?
comment posted at 8:07 AM on Jan-22-01
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comment posted at 12:21 PM on Jan-23-01

"The world is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we can imagine." I defy anyone to read this and not find at least one thing which dumbfounds them. For me: the woman with the knife in her neck, Canadian election open mike gaff, C***fest at Penn State, obscene Furby, the dominatrix who lost one and what she did.
comment posted at 8:19 AM on Jan-22-01

User Friendly goes public. And the commercialization of geekdom takes yet another giant leap forward. How long before there are Official Geek(tm) Shops in every mall?
comment posted at 10:42 AM on Jan-21-01
comment posted at 12:25 PM on Jan-21-01

If only we backed this guy's mission or these folks, the national nightmare may have never come to fruition. They even offer a reward if you can prove Texas is part of the union. Don't forget to ask your congressional leaders to support the secession amendment, and support their real leader.
comment posted at 8:23 AM on Jan-22-01